


Among the Dead, their Demons, and the Fog from the River

by coyotedoll



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angels, Canon - Manga, Character Study, Crime Scenes, Demons, Detective Noir, Drabble Collection, Fanfiction, Gen, Ghosts, Manga & Anime, Multi, Murder Mystery, Other, Paranormal, Reapers, Supernatural - Freeform, ciel is just a middle schooler with trauma, demons and other supernatural characters are slightly more unnerving than they should be, drabbles that all come together somehow, fanfic rewrite, filler arc, no beta we die like ciels parents, of sorts, original filler arc, sebastian is a bastard of course, supernatural characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28282779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotedoll/pseuds/coyotedoll
Summary: Amelia has several run-ins with a little boy and his butler and begins to realize that she is not the only supernatural being crawling around the streets of London, but she is certainly the one police are closing in on.-In which yours truly completely overhauled a fanfic she wrote when she was in middle school. A bit of a character study, but also, all of the supernatural characters are as scary as I really think they are.
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> -  
> Hello hello! Yes this is actually a complete overhaul rewrite from a fic I wrote when I was 13 and didn’t actually know how to write LMAO. The tone of it is a bit darker (or at least it seems darker because it's written better) than what I had originally written because alas, I was a child and am how 20 - so I'm sorry if my middle schooler humour remains superior. At the time I'd written the original, the BB manga was nowhere near where it's now, so in order for this fic to make some kind of sense please think of it as an isolated filler arc, if you will. 
> 
> As for the original fic, it’s still up on Wattpad because I’m a moron who forgot the email for the account I had and I can’t take it down - oh well. If any of you ever read “The Duchess” by c_alexander on Wattpad and were severely disappointed to find it was last updated in the year 2014, I am sorry. This one’s for you.

-

She killed because it was the kind of thing that monsters did.

When she had first realized that she was a monster she began to kill almost immediately - she saw no other choice, no other option. Others knew she was a monster, and she had to do something about that. Lying was one of the many things that came with being a monster. Lying, cheating, beating, murder. The woman at her feet was definitely not a monster, she knew that much. Monsters tended to not kill other monsters, it was too much of a hassle, it put you at too much of a risk. Human women on the other hand...well…

Blood pooled around her ankle boots. In the dark of the night, with only the moon to watch over her sins the blood at her feet could pass off as tar, had it not been for the pale neck it was coming out of. She was beautiful, this girl she had killed. However, in her eyes most women she came across were beautiful - specially around here, in the shanty parts of London, where the brothels became quite lively at this time of night. The guards meant to prevent these places from setting up shop quite at home within them and their general perverse atmosphere.

Her girl had been one of them, a prostitute, but now she was not. Now she was just dead. Lying pale and cold on the cobblestone alleyway, with Amelia’s ankle boots frozen in the steadily growing pool of her blood. Amelia certainly did not want to kill her, but her girl had found it out. She had realized. Among the haze and the sex and the alcohol of these brothels Amelia found it was harder for people to tell something was wrong with her. If she looked sickly it was because most whores did. If her eyes reflected light when they shouldn’t have it was a trick of the gas lamps. If she had blood on her dress it was her own.

Nonetheless her girl had realized, and she had panicked, and then Amelia had panicked.

Amelia took a couple of steps back. Slowly dragging her feet on the cobblestones, hoping to rid her heels of the blood she had spilled before she went back inside. If anyone asked for her girl, she’d explain that they had gone outside to gossip when a man had offered to take her with him for the night. He’d offered a handsome amount of money--so much that Amelia tried to fight her for it, but in the end the man had chosen her girl instead. They were off then. Amelia would return back into the shop only slightly disgruntled. Tomorrow morning, when the paper boys come around to sell the news they’ll find her for sure, but there is nothing that worries the police less than a murdered prostitute. Amelia of all people, knows this well.

She returns to the brothel she inhabits. _Inhabit_ because she does not work here - not that anyone could tell her apart from every other girl. She smiles politely when smiled at, she offers a hand out for a kiss when asked, and when she notices a shawl forgotten on a chair she snatches it up with a nimble hand, wrapping it around herself before anyone notices it does not belong to her. Among the people in the crowd Amelia vanishes, and in the early morning when the fog from the river covers the streets still she is out the door on her way to the bakery. She passes her girl from last night. The paper boys are not here yet.


	2. The Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's raining and Ciel ponders on how weird Sebastian is.

Atop his large wooden desk there lay a handful of sheets of paper. Names, dates, places, whatever bits of background information Sebastian had managed to find, and a picture or two of the victims if it was available. Some of the murders had made it into the newspaper - the first few, when they had been shocking enough to use as headlines. Sebastian had cropped those articles out for him as well, and it had all been delivered to him alongside a plate of scones he’d already eaten and a cup of warm tea.

Ciel did not mind solving murders. They were not particularly interesting most of the time, and they happened so often now that it had become mere busywork in between larger, more pressing matters. He was certain at this point that Arthur and his men at the Yard would pick and choose cases they found too complicated or too senseless and sent them his way only in the hopes that he would dismiss the whole thing entirely - lessening the Yard’s own bulk of work. If the Queen’s Watchdog couldn’t do it, then it simply couldn’t be done. Ciel made the mental note of telling Arthur off at some point in the future. The commissioner had always been a thorn in his side, but he preferred the times when Arthur had at least the decency to despise the way Ciel navigated the underbelly of London crime over this new extra workload. He wrapped his hands around the porcelain teacup, letting the warmth from the tea envelope his hands. It had been cold and grey out all day, and if he looked out of the window of his office he could see a thick layer of fog in the distance.

 _Downtown London must be feeling very dreary today_ He thought.

With a sigh and a short sip from his cup he returned his attention to the papers on his desk. In essence, someone was killing people, but the victims seemed so far apart in most ways that Ciel could not be sure this was truly the work of a serial killer. They had all occurred in Whitechapel and its surroundings, so there was that, but it was still too wide of a radius for them to be connected, and Whitechapel was the kind of place where these things simply happened. The time in between murders also seemed too long for it to be a spree of killings, they were all several months apart, and it made Ciel think that perhaps these were crimes of opportunity and nothing else. Their cause of death had not been determined either, but he would have to ask the Yard for their bodies if he wanted any kind of answers. So he was ultimately at a wall, and it annoyed him because there was no sound reason for him to be doing any of this in the first place.

Seven people had died. Three tradesmen, an accountant, a physician, a paperboy, and most recently a prostitute. Seven people had died and Ciel had answers for none of them, but there was a large part of him that really did not care. Maybe he would tell off Arthur a lot sooner than he had anticipated for wasting his time. What else was there on Ciel’s agenda, though? Talking to some investors, some merchandise to approve, new candies to taste test. He’d have to wait for the sky to clear out, since there was no doubt the rain had sent everyone downton inside, and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about bumbling his way around people in damp coats, he cold wasn’t good for his own poor lung health - but as soon as the rain was done he could at least take a walk around Whitechapel and see if anyone had seen anything. At the very least he’d take the opportunity to pass by one of Funtom’s new offices and check in with the new girls they had hired.

He took another sip from his teacup, and rang the little bell that hung to the side of his head on the wall behind him. A handful of minutes passed, and Ciel rang the bell again. It seemed like the world did not want him to get anything done today, and the offer grew more tempting by the second. Maybe he would ditch his duties for today and return to his room for a nap. Ciel furrowed his eyebrows together and tilted his head in the direction of the door once again. _Where is he?_ Ciel thought.

Sebastian was always freakishly on time to everything - hauling Ciel and everyone else along with him from place to place with such efficiency it made one dizzy - until the times in which he was most needed, because he was a bastard. Ciel could picture him now, crouched down by the back door of the kitchen, using the good hand towels to dry off the stray cats that would come by because they knew all they had to do to get fed around here was appear in Sebastian’s field of vision. Ciel leaned back into his seat, and turned to pull on the string of the bell a third time when he heard the sound of the doorknob turning.

“Speak of the devil…” Ciel said, training an eye on the man before him.

Sebastian’s footsteps never made a sound, regardless if there was a carpet on the floor or not. His uniform was always spotless, and perfectly ironed. It clung to him in a way that made his body appear as if held together by the darkest of shadows, with only the stark white undershirt hinting at the fact that maybe he had a torso. Ciel always thought his limbs were too long. Not the gangly kind of long one might find on a teenage boy still growing into himself, but the kind of long limbs a hastily made puppet might have. As if Sebastian had not been entirely sure how human proportions worked, and so he had just guessed. Since no-one had ever blatantly pointed it out though, he had never bothered to fix it. Or maybe that was just how tall people were built, certainly Ciel would not know.

“-And he will appear.” Sebastian replied, bringing up a long, slender hand to rest over his heart. The ghost of a smile on his face. “What may this devilish butler do for you today, my lord?”

The face too, Ciel had always thought Sebastian had gotten terribly wrong. He looked rubbery. Like a doll. People did not look like that. His skin was too smooth, his nose too straight, his cheekbones too sharp, and Ciel could go on all day about the deep red eyes Sebastian had not bothered to hide. Ciel knew that if he ever counted Sebastian’s too long, too dark eyelashes they would turn out an even number on each eye. Ciel had spent a great amount of time looking at Sebastian, at first because he thought the demon would certainly kill him without care, but later on because he’d found the way Sebastian pretended to be a normal human person quite amusing. Ciel was positive there had to be someone else who had caught on to Sebastian’s puns, but he could never be fully sure of it. Ciel also knew that there was very little out there that entertained Sebastian in the way making a hell of a joke did, and so they occurred very often.

“These Whitechapel murders make no sense. I don’t believe they’re tied together at all. However, I think it would be good to take a look around the place as soon as the rain stops.” Ciel said. “Just to get this whole thing over with.”

Sebastian nodded, his hands clasped behind his back. “I do believe the rain won’t cease until tomorrow. Tonight, if we’re lucky.”

 _I do believe_ meant _I know_ when it came from Sebastian, because apparently demons felt the local climate change in their bones or something - Ciel had learned this was just one of those things Sebastian knew a long time ago, and he had let it be.

Ciel sighed. “Alright then. We shall go tomorrow, when the sky clears.”

Sebastian nodded once more, and then he held out a hand, bowing forwards a little. “May I take your plates? Or perhaps my lord would like another cup of tea?”

Ciel could use another cup of tea. He sat up from his chair, gathering his papers into one stack he placed to the side. “Yes, more tea would be perfect. But I’ll have it in the drawing room. Thank you, Sebastian.”

Sebastian gave a final nod, and stepped closer to the desk in order to pick up the plates. Ciel walked past Sebastian towards the door of his office, and as he turned the doorknob around a flash of lightning shone through the window on the opposite side of the room. 

“Oh my…” Sebastian mumbled, plates all carefully balanced in one hand. “Perhaps I spoke about the rain too early.” 

Ciel heard the thunder crash somewhere far away, and when he turned to look back at Sebastian he saw the man looking beyond the window straight into the stormy skies. As he walked down the hall towards the drawing room, he wondered when was the last time he’d seen Sebastian blink. 


	3. The Spider in the Bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelia watches a stranger do strange things in a bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!   
> Yes I know it's been a month since the last update I am *sorry*. School and work and my own ADHD hit me like a thousand trucks - but here we are! I'll hopefully update more frequently but I don't want to make any promises.

Amelia sat unseen among the crowd in the bar. No-one in town was a stranger to rain, but the sudden downpour in the middle of the day had caught everyone in the midst of their errands, and not wanting to return home just yet most people had holed up somewhere, waiting for the rain to pass. She liked it when it rained. People blurred together in the water, and she blurred alongside them. Never out of place, never causing an ounce of suspicion. She tightened the shawl around her shoulders. The amount of people in the bar provided quite the amount of body heat, but she was so used to the cold that it was a reflex at this point. The smell of wet dog that filled the air was a bit too much though, she wrinkled her nose. Brothels were one thing, always smelling of smoke and perfume. Filling your lungs with intoxication and premature memory loss. Never drowning you with clogged drain water. But the smell was a small price to pay for the warmth of the bar. She had smelled much worse quite often.

Few people stood out within the crowd in the bar, but if Amelia was good at anything it was observation. A man in a very nice hat and equally nice coat had been trying to get the barkeep’s attention for a few minutes now, and he only kept getting louder. A young shopkeeper at the other side of the bar must have been speaking to the funniest man in London, because Amelia had noticed her laugh at almost everything he had said to her. He didn’t look very well bred, so there had to be other kinds of charms he had to offer.

There was a third person Amelia had kept glancing at, her curiosity getting the best of her and her eyes almost never leaving their back. From where she sat within the crowd he eyes followed the meandering figure as they weaved through the bar in the way Amelia thought only she was capable of. Not that she hadn’t come into close contact with other things like herself before, but they were still few and far between, and the unspoken rule she had established for herself was not to engage with others unless absolutely necessary.

From the way this person waltzed through the crowd Amelia had figured that this was the kind of entity that preferred humans not look at it, and evolved accordingly. There was no way the people next to them hadn’t noticed the long silver head of hair that wove around them, stopping every few seconds in the middle of the crowd. Dead ends of hair clinging to the damp cloth of strangers’ clothes like elongated spider web. It was this clinginess that held her firmly down on her chair. She did not like to be touched, and she did not have to imagine the cold ghostly touch of those strings of hair - likely also wet still from the rain.

The sun had began to shine timidly through the skylight in the roof, and a handful of people had exited the bar. Amelia knew it would soon empty, but there was no fear as long as the figure left before she did, and it seemed they’re path was coming to an end as they got closer and closer to the door. Amelia heard the shopkeep girl laugh once again and she resolved to return her attention to the girl when, in the brief moment she took her eyes off the silver headed figure, she watched a hand reach out from their side.

Her eyes returned to the figure almost entirely out of her own accord.

She observed then, what she had no other choice but to conclude this person had been doing the whole time. A pale hand, with fingers like spider legs - nails too long, and rings too big - reached out to a woman that stood close to their side. Her back to them, Amelia could see her dark hair was held together in place by a large, jeweled pin.

_Pickpocketing?_ She thought. _Not bad._

She was good at it too, the chains around her neck were all stolen.

She watched the figure’s hand slowly reach up to the woman’s head, stopping just below the nape of her neck, where a handful of loose hair rested just past her shoulders. Amelia assumed the figure would yank the pin and abscond with their winnings before the woman even had the chance to register her hair had fallen out of its place. She watched however, as the hand stopped just at the edge of her shoulders. It turned slowly, clasping the loose strands of hair with utmost care. She watched the figure step even closer to the woman, almost looking like one person in the dim light of the bar. She watched the silver head lower and then rise back up after a quick moment.

She did not watch the figure meander some more around the bar. She did not watch it stop behind someone else - a man this time. She did not watch it open the door and she did not watch it glance in her direction and she did not watch it leave.

She stared. Unblinking. At the neck of the woman with the jewel in her hair.

A bite of hair.

A bite.

Of hair.

She left the bar then. Quickly and without noise, as she always moved. Her breath was quick and before she knew it she had stopped breathing altogether. Her legs kept her going. She walked and walked and walked until the smell of river water hit her nose and her legs gave out abruptly. She’d made it near the river, on the grassy knolls that signaled the end of the city and the beginning of the bridge. She sat there for a while until she'd calmed down. Until it grew dark. She lifted herself up then, and returned to the brothel. Whichever one seemed to have less people in it. She knew the girls would be downstairs mostly, so she took the liberty of wandering around their rooms upstairs and eventually entered one. She sat down at the vanity. A tiny thing, meant for a child. A girl, or maybe a lover, had probably picked it up from the street and repaired it as much as they could. She reached out and grabbed a hair brush. She brushed through her hair until it was neat and smooth, any knots from the rain or the general street were gone. She could not tell if the silver haired stranger from the bar had done to her what they had done to anyone else, but she knew.

She knew.


End file.
